It's getting hard to feel safe on athletic fields

Berks soccer referees talk about incident that led to Utah ref's death

By Mike McGovern

Reading Eagle

Ricardo Portillo knew firsthand that being a soccer referee could be dangerous, that being an authority figure was not enough to keep him out of harm's way.

In eight years as a volunteer soccer referee, Portillo suffered broken ribs and a broken leg in two separate incidents in which he was the target of a player's wrath.

His three daughters begged him to stop officiating, but his passion for the game was so ingrained that he regarded being a soccer referee as a "second job."

Ricardo Portillo died eight days ago in Salt Lake City, the result of a vicious punch to the head, allegedly thrown by a 17-year-old goalie who became enraged after Portillo gave him a yellow card.

Police say that Portillo was hit while recording the yellow card in his notebook. He never saw the punch coming.

Portillo's brain began to swell soon after he arrived at Intermountain Medical Center. He spent six days in a coma before passing. He was 46 years old. In addition to his three daughters, he also had three grandchildren.

One life lost; one life ruined; and two families consumed by trying to make sense out of the senseless.

"It's absolutely crazy that people lose their heads and don't think about the consequences of what they're doing," said Shawn Hinkle, a 1997 Hamburg grad and a PIAA soccer official since 1998. "I just don't get it. It's sad and it's frustrating that people get so emotionally involved. How can you get so upset over a soccer game?"

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers or quick fixes.

Granted, Portillo's death was an extreme situation, but the symptoms that led to it, at least to some degree, have become more and more commonplace.

Mike Mayer, the president of the Berks County Soccer Officials Association, places some of the blame on television and the effect it can have on impressionable kids.

"Kids see more and more soccer on TV; there's the Fox soccer channel, lots of European games on TV," said Mayer, a Fleetwood grad who's been an official for 33 years. "Every call a ref makes (in those games) is questioned. High school players see that, and then we see it in high school games."

The name of the infraction is "dissent," and if it were on Twitter - #toomuchdissent - it would be trending.

Hinkle said when he started officiating, yellow cards for dissent were "rare." Now, he estimates that 75 percent of yellow cards issued are to punish kids for expressing their dissatisfaction, either through bad language or body language.

The increasing frequency of yellow cards got so bad that the PIAA instituted a rule several years ago, mandating players sit out for five minutes if carded.

"If you got a yellow card, it was supposed to be a coaching moment, where the coach would talk to the player and the player would cool off," Hinkle said.

But too often, coaches skipped the chance to teach, and sent the offending player right back into the game instead. Hence, the five-minute sit-down rule.

"When I played in high school, that behavior was not tolerated," said Hinkle, who officiated the 2009 PIAA girls title game. "If you got called for dissent, you'd sit your (butt) on the bench. That was pretty true (with coaches) across the board.

"Coaches used to deal with that sort of thing; now they want the refs to do it, so we're the bad guys. That's been a big shift."

There have been others.

Hinkle said that over the last five to 10 years, he's had to deal with players committing harder fouls, more dissent cards, rising tensions and increased aggression.

"People want to retaliate, tempers escalate, it's not fun," he said. "I can deal with the yelling and the complaining, the normal stuff. But when you hear about escalating tensions, about somebody getting punched I haven't been punched, but have I been in situations where I've worried about my safety? Yeah. I've had players in my face, parents coming after me in parking lots, where I've needed security to help me to my car.

"That's insane. But it doesn't surprise me; that's why they have laws on the books to protect referees from abuse."

According to the National Association of Sports Officials website, 34 states, including Pennsylvania, have passed some sort of legislation regarding "assaults on sports officials, on liability issues and on independent contractor status of sports officials."

Utah, by the way, has no such legislation.

Hinkle made it clear that the lack of respect for officials isn't the fault of all coaches and/or players, nor is it limited to soccer.

"I think it's a generational thing; there seems to be a bigger lack of respect in society as a whole than there was 10 years ago," he said. "I guess you could call it a shift in societal values."

You also could call it a sad sign of the times.

"When you see a situation like this," Hinkle said, "you'd hope we'd all step back and say, 'Hey, will this change anything?'

"Well, probably not, but at least it raises the possibility that it might.

"Sports has always been the place that you can get away. Even for kids who don't have a lot of opportunities, sports was an escape: You're out on the field; you can have a good time, friendly competition. You could feel safe.

"But after a situation like this, will people feel safe going on the field?